


Over Again

by aboxthecolourofheartache



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen, Timeline Shenanigans, originally a fill for a prompt meme on tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 20:38:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17967647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aboxthecolourofheartache/pseuds/aboxthecolourofheartache
Summary: A very hand-wavy and speculative bit of introspection in which some emotions are violently assassinated before they can be voiced.  Cheris has a space-related accident and Jedao is cranky because he thinks she is blaming him for it.  She's actually blaming him for lots of other things that are totally unrelated.





	Over Again

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written as a fill from a prompt meme, hence the dislocated (read: nonexistent) context. 
> 
> Prompt courtesy of the lovely [bamboocounting](http://bamboocounting.tumblr.com/) and [naye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naye/pseuds/naye)!

This is what happened when you were sleep deprived enough to allow the ghost of a ghost who lived in the back of your head to influence your muscle memory. In life, Jedao’s dyscalculia did not just affect his ability to perform rapid calculations but also tangled the way his fingers reached for components of a grid screen. Nevermind that the grid screens had been reorganized one hundred and fifty years ago according to a recalibration of ergonomics dictated by an Andan-Nirai joint council in response to a doctrinal shift. (The Andan and the Nirai might have been on the same council, but they had not cooperated. For eight years, it had been heretical for a person’s third finger on the right hand to be longer or shorter than the statistical average. People of a certain age would still show off their elaborate prosthetics, having ostentatiously proved their loyalty by their willingness to remove the offending finger themselves. Others remarked that if they hadn’t made their own pageant of it, the Vidona would have. Less than a decade later, it was a moot point when someone finally managed to get the Rahal to void the interdict and prevent further, non-sanctioned digital sacrifice. The cult had to start tilting atmospheric values before they decided to intervene, of course.) In practice, this meant Jedao struck for keys that weren’t there and struck for them in the wrong order anyway. 

Cheris touched the corner of her eye, wiping away a crystalized drop of blood. It spun away into the low gravity of the shuttle, throwing tiny, twinkling fractals of light through its pinpoint prism onto the walls. She remembered the jolt of crossing into a field of unexpected and unknown exotic material that did not show on scan. She remembered hitting her head. She remembered her hands moving almost of their own accord across the grid displays while the ship shrieked and flashed at her, insistently advising that she fix a problem it sensed but could not recognize. The problem was still in full force, but she - or her hands - had at least turned off the alarms. She remembered the lights dimming as the ship engaged an emergency power conserving mode. 

Cheris remembered that Jedao was dead. Not only was he dead, but he was dead twice over. 

“I know I am famously bad at math,” said Garach Jedao Shkan, undead Shous General and omnicidal mass-murderer. “But the date on that readout cannot be correct.” 

Cheris had thought about mourning him. He had lived in her head, after all. It was as intimate a relationship as one could imagine. She had decided mourning would be wasted on the Immolation Fox. Cheris might be able to change time with a numerical brushstroke against the fabric of the cosmos, but she had better things to do with her days. 

“I still can’t hear your thoughts, Cheris. You have to subvocalize if you want me privy to whatever scathing commentary is going through your head.” 

No words came to mind that she wanted him privy to, so she did not speak. Cheris pulled herself to the storage hatch in the pilot’s cabin in search of a first aid kit. The low gravity did not help her clumsy movements. 

“You’re not giving me the silent treatment over the date on the readout, are you? You are much too practical for that. Besides, why do you assume it’s my fault we got sent back in time?” 

This was the sort of ugly-edged joke she expected from him. In other circumstances, it might have been something akin to comforting to know nothing had changed. Cheris was tempted to say it was because time travel seemed in line with the sort of things that happened to Jedao. 

“The date is correct,” Cheris said. 

Jedao was silent for a long stretch of minutes that Cheris did not bother to count. “Correct by what calendar?” asked the ghost of a ghost in her head. Cheris hated him very much, but she had also missed him. She knew him well enough to know he had missed her, too. 

“By the new calendar,” Cheris replied. 

He answered her with more silence. The med kit told her she had a fading concussion, which she knew very well already. She might have turned on the lights in the ship long enough to get a good look at her shadow. Cheris left the ship dim, but she did call up a grid display, let the grid choose a cycle of soothing images. A planetary sunset. A fish in an ornamental pool. A long-legged bird. She wanted light, but not too much yet. 

“You set the date back,” Jedao said. 

“There’s another you running around out there now. He’s just a stupid kid,” Cheris said. She had hated him and shot him. She still hated him and would shoot him again. But he was just a stupid kid. 

“Cheris… can you tell me what happened?” 

“Not right now,” she answered. Cheris lay down on the floor, curled on her side facing the changing grid images. There was no way to time travel. There was no way to let Jedao do things over again. All she could do was turn the date back to before everything went wrong and give a stupid kid a chance to do things right this time.


End file.
